solo_sword | Duro, Thursday Fandom time

Growing up, Jaina had been one of those children who found it impossible to do as she was told, especially in a dangerous situation. So it was only natural that as the mental broadcast Leia was sending became a much more emphatic Get away, save yourself that she was glad that Jacen had insisted on going back for her.

They were in the middle of losing Duro to the Yuuzhan Vong, and they were at ground zero. They were trying to evacuate, to keep everyone from being killed, or worse, enslaved, and Leia had decided to go back for one of the facility's only haulers that the Vong hadn't already found, their best chance of escape off the planet. The twins had gone with her, along with one of the Noghri bodyguards, and Leia had insisted on showing Jacen and Jaina how to get to safety regardless of whatever danger she was in. When it all went south, they'd listened.

Jaina had gone because she was used to taking orders, and remembered Mara's words about not committing anyone to battle with a blunted fighting edge. At the very least she was able to get off a signal to her father and Mara and Admiral Wuht to tell them what was happening; if she couldn't do the fighting, she'd do what she could. Jacen, however, hadn't been able to do that much, and had gone back immediately. Jaina'd followed, of course, but not once she'd done everything she'd been ordered to do. And then the messages from Leia to keep away started coming through loud and clear, and Jaina could pick up on the pain involved in it, and she really hated that Jacen had been right about this one.

When she got to the office where Leia was being held, she'd burst in with her lightsaber already out, expecting to have to come in fighting since Jacen wouldn't. She yelled her brother's name as a warning, and a second later the desk was moving rapidly towards the Vong warmaster fully ready to attack Jacen, easily knocking him out of it. And Jaina hadn't been responsible for it.

"Wow," she said, completely surprised. "I take it you're back to using the Force."

Whatever Jaina had been expecting to find in the room, it hadn't been this. There was a single Vong that Jacen had taken care of- stunned, not dead- but as soon as the one was out the window, Jacen began moving, getting to work. It took a second for Jaina to realize what he was doing, that Leia was unconscious on the floor, and that that was a lot of blood.

She had very little time to be worried, or stunned, because Jacen was already finishing wrapping... something that she either couldn't make out or just didn't recognize around Leia's bleeding legs, and then slipped her arm around his neck to pick her up. "You've got to run interference," he told Jaina. "If I use the Force to control her arterial blood flow, I can't concentrate much on where I'm going."

"And you're bleeding too," she said. Blurry as it was, she could see the mark of red on his scalp from where the Vong's thud bug had hit him.

"Not serious. Not like... this."

She wasn't arguing. If he said he was fine, she was going to take him at his word. "Follow me," she said immediately, starting out to the stairway and vaulting over the railing, because she they didn't have time for stairs.

A lot of people would spend the time fretting, overthinking the last thing they'd said and all the ways they'd wronged the hurt party like they were planning out some twisted non-goodbye. Jaina was able to recognize that that did no one any good, least of all Leia, and focused instead on finding the way out. She knew the layout of the administrative building well enough from her time here, but once they'd gotten down into the tunnels below the building, she had to rely on the instructions they'd been given on how to get out. Because Leia had pretty much committed herself to the equivalent of giving up her seat on a transport by not escaping the Vong when the twins did.

The tunnel underneath would connect to the mines at a drain hole, but the drain was there for the foul-smelling water rushing past them. Jaina knew she wouldn't be able to withstand the current, let alone Jacen, who was counting on her to live in the here and now while he kept his attentions on Leia. So, fine. "I'm going ahead," she said. "Watch for me."

Later it would kind of amaze her that she managed to make it to the tunnel wall, though at one point when the icy cold waters pulled her down, she wasn't sure she was going to. With her lightsaber finally jammed into the wall to anchor her, she managed to get Jacen's attention to get him to grab a hold of the utility line she'd thrown out to him.

Once she'd managed to reel him and Leia in and they'd climbed onto the rocks, Jaina's first action was to check on her mom. For the first time she concerned herself with thoughts about whether or not the filthy water would cause infection in the many lacerations Leia had sustained, followed quickly by a dimmer question of what they'd gotten her with anyway to cause that sort of damage.

"She's alive, but barely. Can you go on?" she asked, looking up at Jacen.

She didn't know what she'd do if he couldn't. Or if he wouldn't. Well, okay, if he wouldn't, she was killing him. She could stop the blood flow like Jacen had been doing, or she could levitate Leia to safety through the rest, but she couldn't do both and navigate them the rest of the way out without her brother. She wasn't that good, and staying wasn't an option.

Thankfully, Jacen pulled himself up to a sitting position on the rocks, radiating exhaustion, but said, "Go. I'll be right behind you."

*****

Jaina had no formal medical training, but she knew the Falcon like the back of her hand, and the medical equipment aboard the ship had proved necessary once or twice with this family. Once they'd gotten Leia settled on a bunk, she got herself to work setting her up for the trip to better facilities, movements almost automatic as she set up an IV and a more sophisticated sort of tourniquet than a manipulated Yuuzhan Vong creature.

"That should hold her until we can find a bacta tank," Jaina was saying as Jacen watched from the sidelines. He could have done this, but she'd just sort of taken over instead, and he hadn't fought her on it. He'd also tired himself out more in the escape, though. "I don't know about her legs, though-"

"Jaina."

Jaina looked down, saw Leia just coming to consciousness. "Heard your voice," she went on, more or less whispering. "Thanks."

Not ready to do this quite yet, Jaina busied herself with more equipment. "Jacen did the hard part."

"No. What you did. Harder. Furious with me, but... came back."

There weren't really words to explain why she'd gone back. The simple fact was that it was her mother. It didn't even have to do with any sentimental idea of doing the same thing for anyone. The partial blindness had saved her from having the look on Han's face when he met them, but she'd caught his sense, and she wouldn't have been able to handle it if Leia hadn't made it out of there alive, with or without Jacen there.

Still not comfortable with this right now, she leaned over to kiss Leia's cheek and said, "Lie still. We'll get you out of here."

"But... Duro... Basbakhan..."

Jaina felt her jaw tighten. Basbakhan was one of the Noghri, a race once enslaved by the Empire, utilized by Grand Admiral Thrawn, known for being deadly and not much else. They'd served Leia out of respect for Vader for Jaina's entire life, and half the time she'd never known they were there. And the Vong had either killed or captured one of them. On a different level, that was more unsettling than anything else that had happened today.

As for Duro... They weren't going to get Duro back. The Vong had a direct path to the Core Worlds now, including Coruscant. On to worrying about the next crisis already.

"We're evacuating," Jacen told her.

Leia was already out again, and Jaina cut off Jacen's worry to explain, "There's a sedative in that drop. Otherwise she'd roll down, crawl to the quad gus and bleed to death." And she was serious. Weirdly, on that, Jaina finally understood her completely.

[Again, dialogue taken straight from Balance Point. Blah blah NFB, NFI, OOC OK, OMG, ATM, NYC, BRB, AT-AT, IDK my BFF Jill, TMI, HIMYM, BBC, DVD, NFL, LBC, MVP, NPR, KFC, BBD, LMAO, AT&T, BYOB, YMCA, *stops now omg*.]